Word: rectal
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HOSPITALS The Rectal Thermometer
...Near dawn every morning, a nurse walks into the hospital room, wakes the patient and subjects him to what for many remains a humiliating procedure, although it has become routine: insertion of a rectal thermometer. "The importance of this entrenched practice," said last week's Journal of the American Medical Association, "is so universally accepted that, like the mechanics of normal breathing, it is rarely discussed or even considered...
...baby died because the thermometer had pierced the wall of its rectum. Actual perforation of the rectum appears to be rare, says the A.M.A., but "injury to the rectum by the thermometer is not uncommon. Severe bleeding, ulceration, abscesses, hematomas and scarring have been reported." Autopsies indicate that rectal injury may occur in more than 6% of patients...
...believe," says Dr. Freud, "that was the first time anyone ever took a rectal temperature while sipping coffee on the Via Veneto...
...week they tested the subjects in Oklahoma City to determine base lines for pulse, blood pressure, breathing rate, urinalysis, flicker-fusion time (how fast a light can flicker before it appears to merge into a steady beam), perspiration from the palms (an index of emotional tension), and rectal temperature every two hours round the clock...